Comment by open-source-ux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by open-source-ux | Hacker News Reader

A question for Pascal programmers: have you used Pascal for web development? And would you recommend it for web development? If so, how did you find its speed of execution? By web app development, I mean code that runs server-side and processes forms, or generates pages dynamically.

Web development is dominated by dynamic languages, but surprisingly few compiled languages seem to make headway in this space. The Go programming language looks like it might change that, but other compiled languages remain quite niche.

I know many people baulk at the idea of running an "old" compiled language like C or Pascal, but these languages seem (to me) to remain extremely fast and very light on resource usage. Two qualities that feel a bit out of fashion in todays web programming environment.

Yes I do, but not as old style PHP or ASP (html pages server side rendered). I use AngularJs for the front end and a CGI/Stand Alone servers written in Lazarus/FPC server side.

Please take a look at the Brook Framework, it allows developing REST applications: http://silvioprog.github.io/brookframework/

Thanks for posting this. I am an old Pascal programmer. Love the language and did a phd thesis entirely in the old turbo Pascal IDE. (All programming + using the editor for LaTeX files).

the brook framework doesnt seem very active

The GitHub repo doesn't, but Silvio is working privately on the new 2.0 version. Also there's a Google Plus community https://plus.google.com/communities/101133820055678331036

Anyway, the current version is very stable, I use it since a couple of years without a glitch.

In addition to the Brook framework mentioned above, check https://github.com/synopse/mORMot. Maybe start from this blog post by the author: http://blog.synopse.info/post/2015/01/10/mORMot-under-Linux-...

I wouldn't call JVM and .NET platforms a niche, unless you mean AOT only languages and even in that case there are AOT toolchains for JVM and .NET.

Regarding Pascal, Delphi does have components for web development, but given its current enterprise focus they are more tailored to bring existing Delphi applications to the web, not for greenfield projects.

AdaCore has a web stack for Ada in terms of Pascal family of languages and web.

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